Using legal canons of construction, there is no distinction between flags and things made to look like the flag. Otherwise it would render 36 U.S.C. §176 (j) fairly meaningless: “No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.”
If this really only refers to actually cutting up a flag and using that part as part of a uniform, then it would only apply in such narrow cases to be rendered moot. In statutory construction, the language should never be interpreted in a way that renders it moot. I’m happy to entertain counter-arguements.
Flag code is etiquette and not criminally punishable, but I’m just pointing out that since “[n]o﻿ part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform,” these schools are likely in violation of that etiquette and potentially being as disrespectful to the flag as other violations (violations which I will not enumerate here).
That said, I don't condemn the uniforms on the basis of poor flag etiquette (though they probably are based on the arguments I’ve expressed), I’m dislike them for how gaudy and poorly designed they are. They also smack of “look-at-me-being-patriotic” type of sentiment that can often seem insincere.
Here are some examples attempts by my teams to be patriotic that I hated:
All BYU really needed to do was keep their standard logo and change one or both of their blue helmet stripes to red.
"Row the Boat" Gophers with their strips of bacon--should have worn these against Iowa:

I got a chance to see ASU's maroon, gold, and grey uniforms in person this weekend and they don't look good. They're not as bad as the grey Gophers football uniforms, but they are pretty bad. In a high contrast situation like an ice rink, the grey is so dark that it becomes muddled with the maroon, so most of the time you can't even tell their uniforms are grey. And when you do see them close enough to make out which parts of the uniform are grey, it makes you wonder about the point of including grey since it's not always visible and it's not a school color. Maybe they would look better if they lightened the grey a little bit and/or made it metallic pewter.
Also, another problem with the jersey is the trident logo as a crest seems a little sparse--a hockey jersey seems to be the perfect place to have the old Sparky logo, while the trident adorns the helmets.
A couple of side notes:
The Gophers wore their older gold "M" jerseys for the season finale instead of their diagonal "GOPHERS" jerseys from earlier in the thread. Also, good for ASU for joining the NCAA, but man, they are a bunch of goons--they are the most dirty NCAA hockey team I've ever seen, and living in Minnesota, I've probably seen every B1G, NCHC, and WCHA team at least once the past 5 years. I haven't seen bush league stuff like that since watching college club hockey games in Utah. I think the consensus among coaches, players, and fans is that they would be happy to never play those guys again until they clean up their play.

The last point is important, too—that is, trademarks last only as long as you continuously use them in commerce. (Unlike patents and copyrights, which are specifically enumerated as Congress’ constitutional powers, trademark falls under Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce, and therefore a protection for a mark not used in commerce would arguably exceed Congress’ constitutional bounds.) The system doesn’t like to protect what would otherwise be innocuous or “public domain,” so it requires that the trademark holder use the marks in order to keep them alive. That’s how the marks fell out of trademark protection in the first place. In a case like this, the specific marks might still have copyright protection, which would open a different can of worms.

The other possibility is they get promoted to the AHL, only to have the parent club realize that Boise isn’t a great AHL city, at which point Boise would have to try to engineer a demotion to the ECHL.
Seattle might be better off getting the Utah Grizzlies promoted back to the AHL, because Salt Lake City seems like it would be a better market than Boise—as a Delta hub, there are flights from SLC to everywhere in the West. I’m actually a little surprised Vegas didn’t try to promote Utah for their AHL affiliate.

Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State. I’m not up on my college hockey helmets—anyone I’m missing? It’s not like there are a ton of striped hockey helmets, and those helmets are all derivative of a popular football program. That said, it’s at least 3 more than the NHL.
I think the only NHL I’d like to see a designed helmet for is Calgary.

Though technically, in the NPB, it’s an owner-nickname monogram, not a city-nickname one. Yomiuri Giants, Hanshin Tigers, Yakult Swallows, etc.
I would hate to see teams using two-letter postal abbreviations. I personally only use them for addressing mail, otherwise I use AP Style Guide abbreviations, which look better to my eye.